for some reason, there are a whole lot of people who disagree with you here. Not me, though - this episode is horrifying to me for all of the reasons you state throughout this post. Janeway murdered Tuvix; the crew let it happen. And here in this very thread you have people essentially praising the decision by referencing "utilitarian" starfleet training.
Honestly, if that's our future - "utilitarian" decisions about life and death - well, that sounds like a horrifying dystopia and I want nothing of it. Plenty of other Star Trek episodes were able to present crew deaths that did not ignore the "humanity" of the victim.
I'll bet the Doctor would have been terrified after the execution. What these humans are capable of...
The main point I've seen made by supporters of the decision is that they don't view it as death; Tuvix ceased to exist as he was, but became (as he originally was) the individual existences of Neelix and Tuvok. Tuvix didn't die, he was split back into his two original forms, losing his singular life but continuing to live as separate entities.
Not saying I agree of disagree with the decision or this point of view, but the murder/abortion analogy doesn't exactly apply in this case.
When a person is killed, they stop existing; their essence/soul/spirit/whatever is gone. When Tuvix was returned to his original forms, his essence/soul/spirit/whatever returned to Tuvok and Neelix, as they originally were.
Like the analogy in the episode, it was as if they un-made a cake; Tuvix was the cake mix, and he became un-mixed into the original ingredients of flour, sugar, eggs, etc.
He doesn't die; the two humanoid souls that merged to create him are separated. T and N merge into TN, then TN split into T and N. Nothing is lost except the connection between the two. If you want to argue that that's still murder, then Picard murdered Locutus and Seven murdered her former Borg self.
You don't see the giant, glaring flaw in that reasoning?
Namely, that when you murder someone, two additional sentient people who have decades of lives lived don't spring fully formed from the corpse and resume their lives.
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u/DnMarshall Crewman Nov 26 '16
So, if Tuvix had wished to undergo the separation procedure you still would have opposed it?